# Leveraging WP-CLI Aliases in Your WordPress Development Workflow

**URL:** https://discourse.roots.io/t/leveraging-wp-cli-aliases-in-your-wordpress-development-workflow/8414
**Category:** blog
**Tags:** guide
**Created:** 2016-12-29T16:13:51Z
**Posts:** 39
**Showing post:** 38 of 39

## Post 38 by @runofthemill — 2018-08-03T19:13:16Z

I made a few modifications to this, including the change noted by @nickkeenan to automate both the script itself, while removing the hardcoded host name in the script, and creating a `wp-cli.local.yml` file in the project root so that you can use the `@dev` alias with wp-cli from anywhere in the project :slight_smile:

Put this block in `Vagrantfile` after `config.vm.provision provisioner do |ansible|`:

```
# Run script to update local SSH config for .dev hostname after `vagrant up`
    config.trigger.after :up do |trigger|
      trigger.run = {
        path: "./bin/ssh-config-development.sh",
        args: [main_hostname, "#{ANSIBLE_PATH}", trellis_config.wordpress_sites.keys.first]
      }
    end
```

And the updated script:

```
# bin/ssh-config-development.sh
#!/bin/bash
host=$1
path=$2
site=$3

# add ssh-config for vagrant to ~/.ssh/config
sed "/^$/d;s/Host /$NL&/" ~/.ssh/config | sed "/^Host $host$/,/^$/d;"> config &&
cat config > ~/.ssh/config &&
rm config &&
vagrant ssh-config --host $host >> ~/.ssh/config

# add wp-cli.local.yml to project root if it doesn't exist with alias for @dev
cd $path/.. &&
if [! -f wp-cli.local.yml]
then
  touch wp-cli.local.yml
fi

if ! grep -Fxq "@dev" wp-cli.local.yml
then

cat << EOF > wp-cli.local.yml
@dev:
  ssh: vagrant@$host/srv/www/$site/current
  path: web/wp
EOF

fi
```

A few caveats:

- if you have more than one site in your `wordpress_sites.yml` it only creates an alias for the first one
- the script assumes your ssh config is located at `~/.ssh/config`
- it only checks for the existence of a `@dev` alias in `wp-cli.local.yml` so if one already exists, it won’t do anything. this might mean the alias won’t work if you’ve run `vagrant up` then changed your site name or URL and run `vagrant up` again
- by default, the alias will not work in the `site/` directory  
– to fix, either add the alias to `site/wp-cli.yml`, delete `site/wp-cli.yml`, or add this to the [configuration](https://make.wordpress.org/cli/handbook/config/#config-files) in `site/wp-cli.yml`:

```
_:
  inherit: ../wp-cli.local.yml
```

---

_[View the full topic](https://discourse.roots.io/t/leveraging-wp-cli-aliases-in-your-wordpress-development-workflow/8414)._